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Improved X-rays bring breast cancer into focus

TUMOURS could be distinguished from healthy breast tissue using a breakthrough in X-ray imaging.

Standard X-ray images record differences in absorption, but can’t reveal details in soft tissue, because it absorbs few X-rays. A more promising approach is to record differences in refraction of the X-rays at the boundaries between normal and cancerous tissue. But the concept has so far proved impractical.

Now a team at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Villigen, Switzerland, has devised a better approach by passing the X-rays through the tissue and then through a pair of metal gratings (Optics Express, vol 13, p 6296). …